...after some cruel person hit it and kept on going - how could they do that? I'm glad that Mr. Fimbres came along and did the right thing! Petaluma is no place for people who don't love animals and I hope whoever did this isn't one of our neighbors!!!
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Passersby rescue dog struck by car
Terrier mix found on E. Washington St. had badly cut front leg, but is recovering

By COREY YOUNG
ARGUS-COURIER STAFF

Lucas, a border terrier mix, is re-united with his owner and on the mend after someone left him for dead on the side of East Washington Street Saturday night.

Thanks to a good samaritan and pet lover who happened to notice the injured dog on the sidewalk as he drove by the First Edition bar that night, the animal shelter was called and a veterinarian worked to save the dog’s dislocated knee and heavily cut leg.

“The bone was showing” through the dog’s front left leg, animal shelter manager Nancee Tavares said. Lucas was bleeding from his injury and probably would have died if Petaluman Jamie Fimbres hadn’t rescued him, she said.

Fimbres, 21, said he was driving east on East Washington around 8:30 p.m. on Saturday when he saw the dog lying motionless on the sidewalk outside the bar.

He pulled into the adjacent gas station and approached the animal, but it got up and started limping toward the intersection with McDowell Boulevard, he said.

“As I got closer to the dog, I could see that he was hurt,” Fimbres said. “His front foot was all bloody.”

At the intersection, Fimbres ran into a friend who helped him chase after the dog as it traveled up North McDowell Boulevard. They finally caught Lucas at Madison Street.

“He was yelping when we picked him up, because he was in really bad pain,” he said.

The two wrapped Lucas in a shirt and called the police, who dispatched an animal control officer to rescue the dog, which had no collar.

Fimbres, who said he’s a longtime pet lover and once saw a vehicle strike and kill a dog — without stopping — hoped to adopt the terrier if no owner came forward.

But late Monday, a Petaluma woman taped a picture of a dog that looked like Lucas to the animal shelter door. A note said she had lost her dog and asked the shelter to call her if it was brought in.

The woman returned to the shelter Tuesday and identified the injured dog as her missing pet, Lucas.

“The owner said he escaped through a hole in the fence she didn’t know was there,” Tavares said. “She cried when she saw him.”

It wasn’t until late Monday that the shelter learned the leg could be saved, Tavares said.

The vet bill came to $1,300, which Lucas’ owner gladly paid when she arrived to pick him up.

“With care, he’ll be fine,” Tavares said.